Caret insertion writing mode is a text input mode that the user can enable or disable. When caret insertion mode is disabled, handwritten text is inserted into the view at the location where it is written. When caret insertion writing mode is enabled, handwritten text is inserted at the location indicated by the insertion caret, regardless of where on the screen it is drawn. Caret insertion writing mode is used automatically for keyboard text entry.

To enable or disable caret insertion writing mode, the user selects or deselects the "Insert new words at caret" option from the Text Editing Settings slip. You can display this slip by tapping the Options button in the Recognition Preferences slip.

Applications do not normally need to be aware of whether caret insertion writing mode is enabled or disabled. The one exception to this is at application startup time, when you might want to set the initial location of the insertion point. This is described in "Setting the Caret Insertion Point" (page 8-26).

There are a few caret insertion writing mode routines you can use to implement your own version of this mode. They are described in "Caret Insertion Writing Mode Functions and Methods" (page 7-47) in Newton Programmer's Reference.

Fonts for Text and Ink Display

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The Newton system software allows you to specify the font characteristics for displaying text and ink in a paragraph view on the screen. The font information is stored in a font specification structure known as a font spec. The font specification for built-in ROM fonts can also be represented in a frame as a packed integer. Both of these representations are described in "Using Fonts for Text and Ink Display" (page 8-17).

The system provides a number of functions you can use to access and modify font attributes. These are described in "Text and Styles" (page 8-25).

About Text Views and Protos

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There are a number of views and protos to use for displaying text and for receiving text input. For basic information about views, see "Views" (page 3-1).